Trend alert: Wine bars are opening where the food is as good as you can find at some of Baltimore's best restaurants - and you can buy a bottle of wine to take home with you. (Well, you know me. Three's a trend.)
The Iron Bridge Wine Co. in Columbia started it all five years ago, with a wine bar, a small-plates menu critics raved about and a dining room that's also a wine shop.
The Wine Market in Locust Point successfully followed the same game plan a couple of years later, although its liquor store is a separate room.
You used to have to take home the empty bottle and steam off the label if you found a wine you liked in a restaurant. Not anymore. At these places, you can buy the wine you had for dinner right there.
You could even argue that Tony Foreman's Cinghiale in Harbor East is an elaborate variation on the wine-as-important-as-food theme, especially with his Bin 604 wine shop so nearby.
Wine bars like Grand Cru in Belvedere Square are expanding their food offerings. People seem to like to have a bite to eat at the bar even more these days, says owner Nelson Carey. Maybe because it's an economical way to enjoy a bit of the good life.
But back to the original model: the Iron Bridge. The chef who was there when it opened, Marc Dixon, moved on to Cafe de Paris in Columbia and is now at the newest restaurant attached to a wine shop, Bistro Blanc (3800 Ten Oaks Road, 410-489-7907) in Glenelg.
Chef Dixon's menu (at least for now) has 16 starters - soups, salads and appetizers - and seven entrees. Dinner entrees run from $15 for polenta lasagna to $21 for New Zealand rack of lamb. When I asked Dixon for a signature dish, he described the "pig and fig," pork with a combination Indian curry and Southern barbecue sauce served with macerated black mission figs.
Bistro Blanc has one offbeat twist: a self-serve "Enomatic wine-tasting machine" with 24 wines on tap. You buy a card like a Starbucks card. With it you can get your own 1-ounce pour, half glass or full glass.
Bistro Blanc is open for lunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and for dinner 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
A CLOSING AND AN OPENING When I heard that Hale's Seafood in Parkville, a longtime Taylor Avenue landmark and destination for 55 years for steamed crabs, had closed, I thought to myself, "Another restaurant done in by the economy."
